Memories Without Him novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Never Sent by Me

Gemma's POV

Vincent sat on the edge of the bed at dawn with my notebook in his hands.

I knew before he spoke that something had changed.

His face was the same one I had seen across the room at the Orsini dinner, closed and quiet.

But he held the notebook in both hands, carefully.

"I read it," he said. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have."

"It's all right."

"It isn't. But I need to say something, and I need you to listen to the whole thing before you answer."

I pulled the sheet up around me and sat against the headboard.

"I never wrote that text," Vincent said.

The room went quiet.

"The night you sent me I love you, I was in surgery. Somebody shot me outside a club. I was under for four days."

"You were in the hospital?"

"For a week. I didn't see your message. I didn't see anything." He swallowed. "Aldo had my phone."

I heard what he said, and I could not make it fit anywhere in my head.

"The reply came at two in the morning," I said slowly.

"From my number. From the Tower's forty-first floor, where I wasn't. I had a man pull the records tonight."

"You never wrote it."

"Not one word of it."

"And the doors, the guards, the line."

"I never gave the order." His voice cracked on it, and he stopped. "I thought you'd decided to leave me. I thought, she's twenty-one, she's free, let her go."

"And I was out in the snow."

"All that time."

I looked at him.

For six months I had told myself one story.

He found me embarrassing, and I was a charity case who had mistaken kindness for love.

I had told myself he was right to turn his back.

I had carried that thought so long that it had worn a groove.

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